I was thinking back to my first computer, a ZX Spectrum way back in 1982, and what I am pretty sure was my first animated graphic where I knocked up a rippling surface. In that case it needed drawing pixel by pixel before using a bit of machine code to load the mighty total of 10 frames of black and white directly into memory and playing it back.

Anyway, I decided to do a quick and dirty version in lightwave, using displacement surfaces and a whacky multicoloured metal surface, and to make it loop smoothly.